Vacancy | Head of Platform

Person Specification and Role Summary

You will have operated at a Team Leader level or higher previously and be comfortable leading a small team of Platform engineers

You will have Platform architect experience and be able to demonstrate this knowledge

You are comfortable staying ahead of the technology curve and are conversant in Cloud technology

The position requires a strong personality who can get the best out of people, lead by example, happy saying “No”, can make decisions and understand the software development lifecycle

The role requires a confident communicator who will build relationships with internal stakeholders and customers.

You will be a true problem-solver with the desire to meet project deadlines and delight our customers and internal stakeholders.

Demonstrate a can do attitude, be willing to learn and listen to other people’s views, team visionary and focused

Responsibilities

As Head of Platform your role will include, but not be limited to the following;

You are a Senior Manager and will report to the Engineering Director, helping set the strategic direction for Platform and related tooling

You will be responsible and accountable for the delivery of Platform projects and Platform roadmap features

You will manage the Platform Tools Team and manage the growth of this team as the Platform capability grows within Appsbroker.

The Platform Tools Team are responsible for building the tooling and standard patterns to automate the delivery and support of Cloud infrastructure and Container solutions

You will provide the Platform Architect sign off function as part of the wider Technical Design Authority (TDA) at Appsbroker and be confident delegating this responsibility if required. You will define our standard and approved architectures / patterns for the Google Cloud Platform technologies described below

Own the Container / Kubernetes vision at Appsbroker

You will liaise with the Head of Architecture to ensure Platform solutions are aligned to our Software Development goals (Project & Product) and supportability requirements

Security is a primary Non Functional Requirement for our Products and our Customer’s projects. You will be able to advise on secure architectures and be able to critique solutions to ensure appropriate levels of security

You will be able to handle change in a fast moving environment

Ideally, you will be an Agile practitioner and have worked in or led teams previously following Scrum, Kanban, MVP etc. All engineering projects will follow either Scrum or Kanban.

Ideally you will have used Jira (or equivalent) and be comfortable understanding Jira metrics, reports and all aspects of running a sprint

You will control cost on assigned projects, ensure the quality of deliverables meet or exceed the agreed delivery timescales of these projects

You will work closely with the TechOps team at Appsbroker (who are responsible for deploying and managing the Google Cloud Estate on behalf of our customers) and ensure they have appropriate tooling and an agreed roadmap to allow them to deliver and support Platform centric projects

You will own internal tooling within Appsbroker and agree with the Head of Architecture and Heads of Development on how best to build this. Examples include: Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment solutions, Container test environments for developers and Remote Working

Be a champion of Google cloud technology, and agile methodologies

Answering day to day questions from the development team and clarifying requirements

Qualifications and Experience

Ideally an Architect level certification from one of the major Cloud vendors (Google, Amazon, Azure etc)

Containers, Docker, Kubernetes (or equivalent) and using these technologies for the architecture of multi-region, load-balanced resilient microservices type platforms